hitlersbrain:I'm willing bet if you actually saw how these things worked you would be seriously underwhelmed. Robotics has a long, long way to go.

Yeah no shiat. I love how the PR marketing videos geared towards dolts writing the checks at the Pentagon have their capabilities pumped up way beyond what they are currently capable of or even theoretically feasible.

Ok I don't understand all the hate for "Canadian Free Press," I read the article but I've never seen them before - this is the only nearly reasonable/rational article I've ever read on drones. It's a slight sensational (like others have noted, these are just flying bots, bots that are scared of rain and jammers and wind) but largely gives an "I don't like this but it'll really happen" tone to the whole thing.

Great Janitor:Molavian: berylman: I am guessing that in two years time somebody will be arrested for theft of government property when a small expensive drone has been found on his property when he in fact did not even know it was there because it crashed.

Yeah, I'm wondering what happens when you swat one.

The government will have a hell of a time explaining why you swatted one of their drones in your house without any form of search warrant...

//Also, most of these drones rely heavily on GPS, compass, and accelerometer readings. The former two are inherently tamperable, a failback to the latter requires substantial amounts of dead reckoning. The sky is therefore not falling...yet... but it will when people get sick of these things. *that's* the real danger to life and limb.

The sound of one hand clapping:About these drones. I've always wondered how these insect and small bird sized drones cope outside with even small gusts of wind. Insects and birds cope because the flight muscles are massively strong for their size and they are incredibly agile. I doubt the drones can match that. Wouldn't they just get blown into stuff all the time?

they don't exist for that reason, apparently canada doesn't have access to snopes link goes to story

FARK rebel soldier:Feral_and_Preposterous: I've never seen birds and flies flying behind a real butterfly and arranging hemselves into a flock. Why would they do it to a fake one?

Yeah good question, the only time I see them fall in behind each other and "flock" is when it's two of them and one of them is going in for the fark. Having seen butterflies try to fark the fake butterfly decorations in my back yard I think that's probably it.

Kind of what I was thinking. I can see butterflies being attracted/following the fake ones. And birds might fall in in pursuit of a meal, but I would hope they've given their little bot a paint job that mimics the colors/patterns of the bugs that make anything that eats them sick. But falling in and "flocking" is just an odd term to use.